In the months July and July some a strange constant rumbling noise is coming from my apartment during the nights. Also my electricity bill a quite a bit higher. One could think I’m running an illegal drug lab and growing marijuana. No, not the case, I’m pre-acclimatizing at home in preparation for our expedition to Pik Korzhenevskaya and Pik Communisma, both mountains above 7.000m.

The most difficult part of climbing, is selecting a route, because this completely depends on the conditions, the weather and your knowledge about a certain area in the Alps. Normally we only start a couple of days before our trip by checking the weather forecast, then find something about the conditions (not easy) and based on this decide where to go.

It has been quiet for a while, but not anymore! We took a break from Project 5 Peaks in 2018 and are now ready to take on the next mountains to come one step closer to becoming a Snow Leopard. In the summer of 2019, we are planning to climb two mountains, Peak Communism and Peak Korzhenevskaya, in a single expedition.

I’ve never had the feeling of being an intense community focused person. I would say that I have just enough friends, I care for my family and in ‘ordinary’ life I put my head down and I work hard. For me the mountains give a radical escape from everything that we consider normal. It offers a change in perspective, a passionate outlet, it humbles me and offers immense solitude in return.

It has been a long, very long day. We have been climbing for over 14 hours and are halfway during the descend from the summit of Khan Tengri to Camp 3. I’m worried about Gijs. His crampon broke during the ascent and now he struggles to keep up. When he joins me, he lays down and doesn’t say a word. He looks exhausted and I’m thinking that he might show some early signs of altitude sickness. I urge him to drink something. Then I ask him some questions and follow his movements to satisfy myself that he is completely ok, before I continue my descend.

I love ski-mountaineering and on my trips to the mountains, I’m always considering the possibility of the mountain being ‘skiable’, and so I try to incorporate skis whenever possible. Our expedition to Tien Shan mountain range was different. While Khan Tengri has a rocky ridge from Camp 3 towards the summit. Pik Pobeda is very steep, icy and has a snowy ridge beyond Camp 2 all the way to Camp 5. The summit ridge which starts in Camp 5 is more or less flat and about four kilometers long - all above 7.000 meters.

I lost almost fifteen pounds during our Lenin expedition. Allert was even worse, he looked like he didn’t have a proper meal in months. When we got home, for some of us it took a full week before our bowel movement got its shit together. So I think it’s safe to say that, in our preparation towards this expedition, we took some valuable Lenin-food-lessons with us.

During the night I wake up several times. I hear the roaring sound of avalanches and rocks coming down from the north face of Peak Pobeda (7.439m). Did we pitch our tent too close? Was this a bad idea? What the heck are we doing here?

Choosing the right gear is more than having just a 'good' jacket. It's about quality, weight, warmth, breathability, personal preference and how everything falls together into place. You need think about your layering system, what do you like and what works? Choose your socks, choose your fabrics, choose your snacks, choose foods and of course, keep all of that as light as possible! As a team we are really happy to have great partners to help us make the right choices. In return we kick their products asses to see if it works!

This is our third night in C3 (5.800m), we’ve been waiting for a good weather window. Yesterday about 20cm of fresh snow covered our camp. At the same there’s no wind predicted. So, we know tomorrow is going to be tough, but we’ve decided to go for the summit. It’s in the middle of the night when we leave camp.

Since, we have no mountains around the corner to acclimatize, we are this year experimenting with hypoxic pre-conditioning. Basically oxygen deprivation at home to let our bodies already partly adjust to the altitude.